


Rapture, Creation, Revelation

by Newtavore



Series: red kurcro cause it's a thing that needs to happen [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotionally Repressed, God Cro, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Musical Instruments, Piano, Why Do You Have So Many Layers, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-21 17:26:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1558289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Newtavore/pseuds/Newtavore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He sits on a small, rickety bench and tells you it's called a piano. He says it's a human instrument, sort of like the guitar you almost never see him without, but it's less portable and more difficult to play. He lets you sit beside him and tap the keys, and tells you things about notes and scales and other words you don't think you can pronounce or remember, but you aren't really paying attention by that point anyways, because you're too distracted by the way his face lights up, how excited he is, how happy he looks to be sharing such a thing with you.</p><p>Or, In Which Cronus Plays the Piano and Kurloz Thinks Important Thoughts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rapture, Creation, Revelation

**Author's Note:**

> shhhh here have more red kurcro that makes no sense in context
> 
> The songs i listened to while writing this, in case anyone's interested, were Rapture, Creation, and Revelations I-III from the Sburb album, and Three in the Morning from the Midnight Crew album.

You think this side of Cronus is your favorite, thus far. 

 

He's split himself into so many pieces, so many layers, that sometimes it's hard to tell who he is anymore, but you think you've found one of the truer aspects of his personality. When he'd first dragged you to this place, this small, half hidden room in the back of his hive, you weren't sure what you were expecting, but this large, strangely shaped black…  _thing_ wasn't it. Nor were you expecting such beautiful sounds to emerge from such a hulking, ungainly looking creature. 

 

He sits on a small, rickety bench and tells you it's called a piano. He says it's a human instrument, sort of like the guitar you almost never see him without, but it's less portable and more difficult to play. He lets you sit beside him and tap the keys, and tells you things about notes and scales and other words you don't think you can pronounce or remember, but you aren't really paying attention by that point anyways, because you're too distracted by the way his face lights up, how excited he is, how  _happy_  he looks to be sharing such a thing with you. 

 

You try to pay attention, if only because of that, but the words flow past your ears like water, and you focus more on him, his expressions and his mannerisms and the animated way he's speaking with his hands, like he has too much love for the subject to keep the words to his mouth only. He shows you how it works, shows you the basic notes, how to create simple little songs by combining sounds and it's really, terribly beautiful, the way he can coax this looming black monster to sing for him, like it's a trained pet chirpbeast. 

 

  
_'Play for me,'_  you sign, perhaps more demanding than you should have, but you want to see him play. You want to watch him as he tames the wicked beast and makes it spit out the most delightful of sounds, and you want to watch his face while he does it. 

 

So he plays, oh by the mirthful messiahs how he plays. You can _see_ the way the world falls away from him, the way everything but the white, flattened teeth and the tiny little foot pedals just vanishes from his perceptions, the way the stress and weariness he carries on his shoulders like Atlas just... slides away like dust in the face of a windstorm. 

 

It's beautiful. 

 

The way his face softens, the way he loses himself to creation, it's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, and you think that this side of Cronus is your favorite, thus far, because this side is so, undeniably comfortable, confident, relaxed and unstressed and so full of  _life,_ for someone so long dead. 

 

It becomes an almost religious experience. Unfailingly, you come to his hive at least once a week and sit on the floor at the foot of his rickety bench, just to listen and watch. The sounds he pulls from the beast are captivating, almost as much as the way his fingers dance across its fangs, and you find yourself falling red as mutant blood all over again. You exist for these moments, when you find something or other about him that's real, that's undeniable, that makes you love him anew, and this is one of the most honest, visceral parts of him you've discovered to date. As you watch him lose himself to the keys, you think that it might even rival the version of him you see when you have him trapped underneath you, staring up at you with glazed, trusting eyes, and the thought makes you shiver. 

 

There's something different, though, a different sort of truth and vulnerability to him when he plays such emotionally charged music, and you love it just as much as the vulnerable, truthful side of him that shows whenever you wrap him up with your flesh and your mind. He reveals so much of himself, his thoughts, his feelings, in the little tunes that he picks out that you think it's almost the same as pushing your way through the weak barriers he has in place and nesting right inside his head, but without the harm caused to you or him in the process. 

 

You usually end up with your arms wrapped around his legs and your head in his lap, and though he complains about not being able to hit the pedals correctly, when he ends the song he buries his hands in your hair and hums, eyes half closed, relaxed in a way you hardly ever see him. You know this is sort of an emotional release for him, a sort of absolution, and you feel so, so honored that he trusts you enough to let you sit here and listen to him spill his heart out into the mouth of a beast. 

 

He tries to teach you to play, of course, just like he tried to teach you to coax tunes from his guitar, but while your hands are apparently shaped perfectly, according to him, you lack the timing and sense of rhythm necessary to do much else but tap out the most rudimentary of songs. You don't seem to  _see_  the music like he does, can't see the way the notes match up and blend together to make works of art on both the auditory and visual plane like he can. The way he can pull strings of sound without even thinking, just matching the teeth up based on tone and location to make things that actually  _work_  is astounding. 

 

He's so very skilled, so very talented, but he hides it away like it's something that can get stolen from him, and maybe it is. You have no idea why he refuses to showcase his gifts like the precious things they are, because empty skulled bragging is one thing, but he actually has the ability to back himself up. 

 

Then you remember all the times he tried to cajole one troll or another into listening to something he'd written, how you had all so cruelly rebuffed him, and you wince. 

 

"Too loud?" he asks softy, pressing a foot down on a pedal that dims the sounds spewing from the gaping jaw of the beast and removing one hand from the keys to bury in your hair. You shake your head and give a rusty, ragged purr from deep in your chest, splaying out further across his lap and signing, ' _Play_ '. With a small, quiet laugh, he reclaims his hand and keeps rolling his fingers over the gleaming teeth, and you settle back down with a silent sigh. 

 

The music lulls you into a state of relaxation, and you could honestly fall asleep sprawled on his lap except if you slept you couldn't listen to him play any longer. 

 

This is a sort of release for you, as well, a sort of vicarious emotional exculpation, a way for you to forgive yourself and absolve yourself of the guilt you feel towards him. 

 

Because you feel guilt. Oh, do you feel guilt. Guilt for every last harsh sign, every eye roll, every instance you’d shunned him, made fun of him, allowed others to wreck him. Every time you’d caused him pain, emotionally and physically. For every last pointed comment, every single unkind word, you feel guilt. You know he doesn’t blame you for any of it, doesn’t hate you for the way you treated him, but that just makes it worse. So you sit here and listen, listen to his heart and soul pour from between blunted monster’s teeth and feel through him. 

 

Sometimes, he’s angry when he plays, and he hits the keys hard and sharp, makes mistakes, pounds out his feelings and lets the rage drain from his frame with every note until he’s spent and worn, hands buried in your hair and shaking from exertion and leftover wrath. 

 

Sometimes, he’s happy, and the music flows like water, rolls like ocean waves across black barred white sand, dances like fish through currents and when he’s done, he’s lighthearted, full of laughter and love and when he kisses you, he tastes like salt and sea. 

 

Sometimes, he’s sad. That, you think, is the worst, because he plays with such emotion that you feel the urge to cry, and as much as you hate it sometimes it’s the most beautiful music he’s ever played. When he’s sad, he crams so much of himself into the mouth of an indifferent beast, so much feeling, the ache and pain of heartbreak and loss and fear and unhappiness, the tug and pull of depression and detached, dark hopelessness, and it’s the worst and the best because the music is insurmountably awe-inspiring, but you hate how he has to _suffer_ for it. 

 

When he finishes, then, he curls around your head in his lap and bows his own, eyes squeezed shut, clutching you like he’d die if you weren’t with him. When you move, then, he jolts, like he’s terrified you’re preparing to leave him, like he fears your departure from his life more than anything else in the world, and when you wrap your arms around him and cradle him to your chest, he clings to you like the world is ending and cries. 

 

His shoulders shake with violent, yet almost soundless sobs, and he adheres himself to you for the rest of the night, going tense and trembly if you have to leave him at all. 

 

You hate it when he plays, then, because it feels like getting stabbed through the chest, like his despair, his fear, his desperate, hopeless unhappiness is yours to bear, yours to live with, and you hate it because all you can think, then, is that  _this is your fault_. You are the cause of this, of his stupid, despondent dejection, his downtrodden, disconsolate grief. You caused this by shunning him, by teasing him, by allowing the others to use him as their own personal stress ball. You cared for him, but you got caught up in the same apprehensive anxiety those weaker minded than you had been, and you had used him as they had, used and used and used until it was commonplace to treat him like dirt. Until he forced himself to change, until he grew bitter and hard hearted and so, so desperate for any sort of love and attention. 

 

He’s not playing sad now, but you’re still clubbed over the head with guilt and grief, for what you’ve done, for what could have been, and you can’t help but swing yourself up into his lap and wrap your arms around him, ignoring the soft, startled noise of surprise and the way his hands clink down on jarring, discordant keys. 

 

You press your lips to his, one hand cradling his cheek, and you hold the other to his heart, signing ‘I love you’. He cards his long fingers through your hair, the cool skin warmed by work and effort, and laps languidly at the stitches sealing your mouth shut, sighing when you pull him closer. 

 

‘I’m sorry, I love you,’ you sign, shaking your head when he asks, sorry for what, because you don’t think you have the words to tell him how at fault you are for everything he’s been through. 

 

Instead, your rest your head in the crook of his neck and run your hands down his chest, petting, slow and lazy, just touching him because you can, because he’s there. 

 

“Are you alright?” he asks, and you nod, but don’t bother moving, just pushing the sign for ‘I love you’ against the beat of his heart, and when he clumsily signs back, you mold your bodies even closer, purring raggedly. 

 

As uncharacteristic as it may seem, you love him, love and pity him in equal, overwhelming measure, and this side of him, this side you know only you’ve seen, just makes your feelings for him swell even more. You love this, love him, even though sometimes he makes your heart ache. 

 

You think it wouldn’t be the same, if he didn’t. Wouldn’t be as real, wouldn’t be as deep, if he didn’t cause you so much guilt and sadness, over him. Flat, one dimensional love, without suffering or pain to make the good times brighter, to make the pleasure sweeter. 

 

“I love you,” he says, quietly, face hidden in your hair, and you can feel the heat of his blush even through your thick curls, “I love you a lot, ‘Loz.”

 

And you love him too. Love him so, so much.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
